Campus Commits $30M to Altgeld/Illini Hall Renovation Project!

Department of Mathematics, Fall/Winter 2013 Campus commits $30M to Altgeld/Illini Hall renovation project! There has never been a greater need The proposed project will restore Altgeld Mathor demand for mathematics and Hall to its historicTimes splendor and bring its mathematicians. New science and facilities up to the standards worthy of a technology are creating unprecedented world-class University. It will transform opportunities to address serious Illini Hall from an aging anachronism into societal challenges and advance a vibrant center for collaborative learning the human condition. Mathematics and research. The proposed renovation provides uniquely effective tools for will move Illinois to the forefront of a solving problems and communicating revolution in new quantitative methods in about them; it makes interdisciplinary science and society, and it will benefit the research in the sciences possible. thousands of students who learn from our At Illinois, the number of majors in courses each year. Actuarial Science, Mathematics, and Specifically the renovation will Statistics is up 30% since 2003, and including majors and non-majors we • modernize 14,600 square feet of teach 30% more student-classes than classroom space and create 6,800 square we did then. feet of new classroom space, appropriate for the interactive learning which is The world-class scientific enterprise essential for 21st century instruction. at Illinois puts the Departments of Mathematics and Statistics • create 5,300 square feet of space for in an extraordinary position to collaborative instruction and research, an assume national leadership in the increase of almost 700%. mathematical sciences. And yet we • unlock 11,000 square feet of new space face a crisis: insufficient space that is Rendering of proposed collaborative space (top) for growth in these two departments. also in outdated and poor condition and diagram showing collaborative spaces (purple hampers our progress towards greater • remake Altgeld and Illini Halls into shaded areas) planned for the renovated Illini Hall. campus destinations for interdisciplinary national leadership. Images by De Stefano Partners. collaborations. With the support of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the • enable us to put interaction between Urbana-Champaign campus, we have developed ambitious plans to faculty and students at the center of the Illinois experience in renovate these buildings. The overall cost is estimated at between Actuarial Science, Mathematics, and Statistics. $80 million and $90 million. We are excited to embark on the journey to raise funds and We are very pleased to report that the campus has committed $30 begin construction on Altgeld and Illini Halls, a journey whose million towards this renovation. This commitment is a wonderful culmination will profoundly change the mathematical sciences at continuation of the university’s historic investment in excellence Illinois. There will be many opportunities to become involved in in the mathematical sciences, and recognizes the fundamental role this exciting project. If you are interested, please contact Matthew that Mathematics and Statistics play in the mission of the University. Ando or Sheldon Katz. With the campus’s support, we plan to seek the remaining funding from a combination of private support and state funds. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign In this issue: Illinois Math Reception The 2014 Joint Mathematics Meetings will be held January 15–18, 2014, in Alumni profile...... 3 Baltimore, MD. The Illinois Department of Mathematics will host a reception Research highlight...... 4 on Friday, January 17, from 5:30-7:30 p.m. in the Johnson Room, located on the first floor of the Hilton Baltimore. ICM news...... 5 Everyone ever connected with the department is encouraged to get together for New faculty...... 6 conversation and to hear about mathematics at the University of Illinois. Department news...... 8 Student profile...... 13 Follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn Donor honor roll...... 14 Look for “Illinois Department of Mathematics” on Facebook and LinkedIn and Giving form...... 15 find out about upcoming events, news items, and other happenings on campus. Illinois Journal of Mathematics...... 16 Check out the photo albums on our Facebook page with photos from the recent PhD alumni reunion and past homecoming events. Also, be sure to check out the videos on our Illinois Department of Mathematics YouTube channel! Math Times is published twice a year by the Department of Mathematics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Math Times is online at www.math.illinois.edu/mathtimes/.

Tori Corkery is the editor of Math Times. A special thank you to Professor Bruce Reznick for From the department chair his help with this issue. Faculty photos by Darrell Hoemann. Dear Friends, The stories in this issue exhibit many aspects Address corrections should be sent to: of what our department does: bring together [email protected] outstanding faculty and students, and enable or them to do great mathematics. Math Times c/o Tori Corkery Our faculty are doing exciting research, and Department of Mathematics they are being recognized for it. Kay Kirkpatrick University of Illinois describes some of her work to understand 263 Altgeld Hall superconductors, which among other things has been recognized with an 1409 W. Green Street NSF CAREER award. Rinat Kedem, Charles Rezk, and Slawomir Solecki have been invited to present their research at the 2014 International Congress Urbana, IL 61801 of Mathematicians, in Seoul, Korea. Several of our faculty have received national and university recognition for their outstanding contributions.

Matthew Ando, Chair We continue to recruit outstanding faculty. New faculty and postdocs provide essential renewal of our research and teaching. The constant influx of new Department of Mathematics faculty and students makes the university in general and our department in 273 Altgeld Hall (MC-382) particular an exciting and vibrant place to work. 1409 W. Green Street The department plays an important role in building the mathematics Urbana, IL 61801 workforce at both the graduate and undergraduate level. In a typical year, we produce between 1% and 2% of the Mathematics PhDs in the country. Telephone: 217-333-3350 The list of recent PhDs and what they are doing now hints at the diversity Fax: 217-333-9576 of their careers and the roles they will play in the future of the mathematics Email: [email protected] enterprise. Website: www.math.illinois.edu We have more than 800 undergraduate majors, and we are increasingly focused on involving undergraduates in research, for example via the BioMath project and the Illinois Geometry Lab. Research provides our students with an opportunity to develop and show creativity and initiative, and to put mathematics into action. The profiles of alumnus Tom Schrickel and undergraduate student Sarah Manuel suggest how powerful mathematics put into action can be. Finally, to deliver a mathematics education worthy of the University of Illinois, we must provide world-class facilities. The proposed renovation of Altgeld and Illini Halls will renew our entire enterprise, providing a strong foundation on which to develop the mathematics and the mathematicians of the future.

Matthew Ando Chair, Department of Mathematics

University of Illinois Department of Mathematics 2 Fall/Winter 2013 alumni profile Tom Schrickel by Jim Dey Mathematics and music always came Even as he studied for his master’s degree, graduating naturally to Tom Schrickel. He pursued both in 1976, Schrickel said his career at the bank was during his time at the University of Illinois flourishing. He started in cost accounting, helping and, 40 years later, continues to do the bank managers determine the costs of providing their same. Math is his vocation, and music is his various services. avocation. “It was fascinating for someone who had essentially “It’s good to have a balance and spend no business experience,” said Schrickel. It was time on things outside your business,” said Schrickel’s analytical skill that prompted his boss to Schrickel, who is 62 and lives in Chicago. eventually suggest he apply for a job in Continental’s But Schrickel’s business—the structured lease lease financing unit. financing industry—comes first. It’s been a An arcane area of corporate finance, lease financing passion since a supervisor at the Continental involves the purchase of high-cost capital equipment Bank in Chicago suggested many years ago for companies that can’t afford to buy it outright. that he give it a try. The purchaser then leases the equipment to the user “I immediately fell in love with it, and I’ve company at a price it can afford. An example would been in the lease financing business ever be that of an airline owning half the planes in its since,” said Schrickel, noting that he uses Tom Schrickel fleet while leasing the other half from lessors like “my mathematics education as a part of my Goldman Sachs or GE Capital. everyday life.” Schrickel said that the business is extremely competitive because One of three children, Schrickel grew up in Sioux City, Iowa, and multiple bidders often vie for the leasing contract, requiring the Palatine, Illinois, where his father worked for the Quaker Oats Co. winner to put together the most financially creative proposal. A World War II veteran who went to the University of Wisconsin After working for other companies for 20 years, he started his to study agronomy on the GI bill, Schrickel’s father, Don Schrickel, own—Schrickel Capital Corp.—in 1995. He is the only employee, emphasized the importance of education to his children. working from a home office but said “it’s not like I’m by myself.” “He was really proud of his education because it enabled him to “I’m always part of a team. ...The knowledge is very specialized, take the next step and provide for his family,” Schrickel recalled. and many investors need advisors,” Schrickel said, noting that Noting that his son had an aptitude for math, the senior Schrickel he coordinates with lawyers, appraisers and accountants to put a urged him to study math in college because it would provide a solid transaction together. foundation for whatever career he chose. “Those words really rang “I typically advise the equity investor in the project, the people true, and I go around preaching that now,” he said. “I thought math who are going to own it,” he said. “I like doing aircraft and railroad would be a great foundation, and I still think that.” cars. But the power plant area is most interesting because it is In 1969, Schrickel followed his older sister Sue to the University of the most complicated. We have a direct tie to the mathematics Illinois, where he was admitted as a James Scholar. Schrickel said world with the use of linear programming to optimize financing he had a great experience at the UI, finding the professors in the structures.” math department to be “really outstanding” and his experiences He said being self-employed allows him to work as much as he playing piano and bass in the UI’s concert band, orchestra, and jazz wants but that he plans to work “until my clients stop calling me.” program exhilarating. “The business I do is intellectually challenging” he said. “I enjoy Schrickel’s musical skills allowed him to earn extra cash as a solving problems for my clients.” student, but he said he decided to rely on his math studies to earn a But Schrickel said he does like taking time off, often traveling with living. He was particularly excited to move into higher level math his wife, Patricia Krapf, to Lake Geneva, Wis., and Scottsdale, courses that required abstract thinking involving “definitions, Ariz. He golfs, reads and hikes, and maintains a relationship with theorems and proofs,” not straight formula-based problem solving. the UI by serving on the department’s Mathematics Development “It’s that type of analytical thinking I have tried to use throughout Advisory Board. One of his favorite activities outside the office is my business career,” he said. performing monthly with longtime friends in the Jazz Consortium, a 17-member jazz band playing at Durty Nellie’s Pub in Palatine. After graduating from the UI in 1973, Schrickel worked at Continental Bank by day while taking graduate classes in business “It’s like playing on a winning sports team,” he said. “It’s a great administration at the University of Chicago by night. He recalled feeling when the band has a good night.” that it was a “difficult three years” because “there was no time to do anything other than work and go to school.” Jim Dey is an editorial writer and columnist for The News-Gazette in Champaign, Il.

Math Times, Fall/Winter 2013 3 www.math.illinois.edu research highlight Superconductors and Other Supercool Phenomena by Kay Kirkpatrick e face a big challenge in mathematical physics—to explain physical phenomena rigorously from first principles. The cool phenomenon of superconductivity, forW instance, poses the question: Can we start from microscopic dynamics and derive rigorously the phenomenological theories of superconductivity? Superconductors have essentially zero resistivity at low temperatures, but there is more to them than just perfect conductivity: Magnetic fields are expelled and bend around the superconductors, allowing levitation and applications such as particle accelerators and MRI machines. Phenomenological theories of superconductivity include Bardeen, Cooper, and Schrieffer’s proposed theory in 1957 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as an approximation; Ginzburg and Landau’s in 1950 as a macroscopic description; and Bose-Einstein condensation in the 1960s at zero temperature. Physicists are trying to build and understand new superconducting materials that could lead to innovative technologies; physicists like Nadya Mason at Illinois have discovered surprising zero- temperature metallic states and other cool features in superconductor arrays. A powerful approach to understanding these phenomena is to construct scaling limits, which can be visualized by considering a drop of dye in water. If we could zoom in to watch the dye on the molecular scale, the dye particles would look like billiards hitting other particles. Each one goes in a straight line for a short time, then hits another particle and goes in a new direction until the next collision. The particles’ microscopic motion is Newtonian and sensitive to their initial position and velocity. Zooming out to the large scale, we see the dye diffusing throughout the water, spreading out uniformly. The macroscopic behavior is probabilistic and given by the diffusion (or heat) equation. Connecting this microscopic motion to the macroscopic behavior is the kind of scaling limit that we seek to construct. Constructing scaling limits requires mathematical tools from probability, functional analysis, and partial differential equations. In my research, I develop tools to prove

Image credit: University of Fribourg (unifr.ch) scaling limits, and I also study the mathematical aspects of both microscopic and macroscopic descriptions. These scaling limits include 1) Mean field limits, which often give the first insights into physical phenomena, and 2) Continuum limits, which justify discrete Kay Kirkpatrick approximations of continuous phenomena. Kay Kirkpatrick is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the I study mean-field limits for spin models of magnets and superconductors, models with University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. particles that have spins in the circle (XY model) or in the sphere (Heisenberg model). My She completed her PhD in 2007 at the collaborators and I have discovered interesting non-normal behavior at the critical temperature University of California, Berkeley, under in the mean-field Heisenberg model. We have also constructed a chain of XY models that the direction of Fraydoun Rezakhanlou. exhibits a two-step phase transition to superconductivity, but so far the zero-temperature She was an NSF postdoc at MIT, Courant metallic state remains mysterious—it might be a spin glass, with random interactions between Instructor at NYU, and PIRE fellow at particles. It would also be nice to discover the critical behavior of more general mean-field spin Paris IX before joining the department in 2011. Her research interests are in models, and some of the results could have applications beyond physics, to neural networks. statistical mechanics, probability, and Mean-field limits are also the first approach for understanding the interaction of bosons and partial differential equations. Currently she rigorously deriving the cubic nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLS) from the microscopic focuses on quantum probability, many- quantum dynamics. The cubic NLS gives the macroscopic description of Bose-Einstein body dynamics, and models for condensed matter. Kirkpatrick received a 2013 NSF condensation (BEC), in which a gas of supercooled bosons all occupy the same state and CAREER award. behave like a giant quantum particle. Learn more about Kirkpatrick on her Continuum limits of nonlinear lattices with long-range interactions have been proposed in website at www.math.illinois.edu/~kkirkpat/. the physics literature to understand electron transport in biopolymers like DNA, and we have been rigorously justifying the proposed fractional-derivative NLS models. The dynamics of the fractional NLS are interesting, with a twist on the Newtonian equations of motion for the expected position and momentum. I hope both to deepen our understanding of nonlinear PDEs and to broaden applications in engineering and medicine. Developing mathematical tools will help us understand physical and biological phenomena; rigorously understanding these phenomena will help us advance mathematical knowledge.

University of Illinois Department of Mathematics 4 Fall/Winter 2013 icm news Kedem, Rezk and Solecki to give invited lectures at ICM Professors Rinat Kedem, Charles Rezk, and Slawomir Solecki have world leader in abstract homotopy theory. He recently extended been invited to give lectures at the 2014 International Congress of Rezk’s Segal Spaces to a powerful approach to (∞, n) spaces, now Mathematicians (ICM) to be held August 13-21, 2014, in Seoul, commonly called Rezk’s theta-spaces. In an entirely different Korea. The ICM is the largest international gathering in mathematics; direction, Rezk is a world leader in the study of chromatic stable it takes place once every four years, with invited speakers talking homotopy theory. In particular, he created the Rezk Logarithm and about the most important research developments in mathematics since went on to make remarkable progress in understanding the power the last ICM meeting. An invitation to speak at the ICM is among operations in Morava E-theory.” the most prestigious honors in mathematics. The program calls for a Slawomir Solecki will present his work in the ICM’s Logic and total of 200 invited lectures for the whole world. To have three ICM Foundations section. Solecki got his PhD at Caltech in 1995 under speakers from one department is a rare distinction. the supervision of Alexander Kechris. After a postodoc at UCLA, Rinat Kedem will present her lecture in the Mathematical Physics section. After receiving her undergraduate degree in physics at Macalester College in St. Paul, Kedem did her graduate work under the supervision of Barry McCoy at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook. Her specialization was in the statistical mechanics of phase transitions in integrable models. Her conjectures from that time, about “fermionic character formulas” for the Virasoro modules related to conformal field theories, have given rise to an entire genre of research in combinatorial representation theory, which is active to this day. They have also proved to be related to wave functions in the quantum Hall effect in condensed matter physics. Kedem later worked with Sato’s “Kyoto School” of integrable models, then led by Tetsuji Miwa and Michio Jimbo. The specialty of this school is solving integrable models using the representation theory of quantum groups and affine algebras. Prior to coming to Illinois, Kedem also held positions at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Massachussetts at Amherst. Image credit: iStock Philippe Di Francesco, Morris and Gertrude Fine Distinguished he moved to Indiana University and then, in 2001, joined the Professor of Mathematics at Illinois, said of Kedem, “Rinat is a Illinois Department of Mathematics. His research is, for the main theoretical physicist turned mathematician. With representation part, motivated by studying dynamics of large groups (usually theory as her all-time specialty, she worked on integrable lattice equipped with a metric separable, complete topology but lacking models and quantum groups with B. McCoy, B. Feigin, M. Jimbo Haar measure). These explorations are informed by mathematical and T. Miwa, and was at the origin of the still-developing subject of logic, in particular, by descriptive set theory, and involve, in fermionic character formulas in representation theory. She applied an essential way, Ramsey theory and concentration of measure this to problems in condensed matter physics with E. Ardonne and phenomena. Solecki proved the first instance of a conjectured M. Stone, and made the connection to cluster algebras, another dichotomy characterizing Borel equivalence relations reducible rapidly developing subject, on which we collaborated since 2007. to orbit equivalence relations of Polish group actions. He clarified Rinat has this special and unique ability to forge ahead and look for the relationship between extreme amenability of groups and possible connections between her own work and other areas of both concentration of measure by proving a Ramsey theorem using fixed mathematics and theoretical physics, which is facilitated by her point methods from algebraic topology, and developed an abstract, command of both languages.” unified approach to finite pure Ramsey theory. Charles Rezk will present his lecture in the Topology section at Professor Lou van den Dries said, “Solecki is a central figure the ICM meeting. His research interests lie at the intersection of in descriptive set theory and its interactions with analysis, algebraic topology and higher category theory. One branch of his topology, and combinatorics. His recent work on Ramsey theory is work gives a definition of the notion of an “(∞, n)-category”, which particularly prominent. He was hired in 2001 when the logic group has been used in recent work in topological quantum field theory. in the department consisted of Henson (retired 2010), Jockusch Other work of his has helped to clarify the connections between (retired 2004), Pillay (now at Notre Dame), and myself. At the time algebraic topology and the theory of formal groups. descriptive set theory had become a very active area of research, Rezk got his PhD at MIT in 1996, working under Mike Hopkins. with Solecki a rising star. Back then we were very happy when he After several years as a postdoc at Northwestern University and joined our department, and are now delighted to hear that he has year at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, he joined the been invited to speak about his work at the 2014 ICM.” Illinois Department of Mathematics in 2001. To learn more about the ICM, visit the conference website at Of Rezk, Professor Randy McCarthy says, “He wrote one of the www.icm2014.org/. founding documents in the ∞-category revolution, and he is a

Math Times, Fall/Winter 2013 5 www.math.illinois.edu new faculty Anil Hirani Associate Professor PhD 2003, California Institute of Technology Anil Hirani completed his PhD at Caltech. His PhD years were sandwiched between jobs—in Silicon Valley and Tokyo before PhD and at the Jet Propulsion Lab and the University of Illinois Computer Science Department after PhD. He is interested in applied and computational mathematics. Specifically, he works on discretizations of exterior calculus as numerical methods for PDEs; and on applied and computational topology. He lives in Champaign with his wife and 3 children and enjoys growing vegetables in the family garden.

Ikemefuna Agbanusi J.L. Doob Research Assistant Professor Anil Hirani PhD 2013, Boston University Ike Agbanusi obtained his PhD at Boston University. His research interest is in partial differential equations and most especially in boundary value problems, Schrödinger operators and geometric applications. When he is not doing mathematics, Ike likes to spend time cooking, hiking and running with his girlfriend Jill. He also enjoys fantasy novels.

Funda Gultepe Visiting Assistant Professor PhD 2013, University of Oklahoma Funda Gultepe completed her PhD at the University of Oklahoma under the supervision of Kasra Rafi. Her research interests are in intersections of geometric group theory and low dimensional topology which Ikemefuna Agbanusi include mapping class groups, group of outer automorphisms of the free group, and random walk on groups. She enjoys using low dimensional topology in solving group theoretical and dynamical problems of on groups. Outside of mathematics, she enjoys reading both fiction and nonfiction and watching films.

Ioan Marcut J.L. Doob Research Assistant Professor PhD 2013, Utrecht University Ioan Marcut grew up in the town of Sibiu in Romania. He obtained his undergraduate degree in mathematics in 2007 at Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania. In 2007 Ioan moved to Utrecht, The Netherlands, where he joined the master class program “Quantum Groups, Affine Lie Algebras and their Application.” During 2008–2012 he was a PhD student under the guidance of Marius Crainic in Utrecht, where he continued his Funda Gultepe research as a postdoctoral fellow, before joining our department in August 2013. Ioan’s research is in the field of differential geometry, more specifically, he studies Poisson manifolds. Poisson geometry lies at the intersection of three very active areas of mathematics, namely Symplectic Geometry, Foliations and Lie Theory.

Babak Modami Visiting Assistant Professor PhD 2013, Yale University Babak Modami completed his PhD at Yale University under the supervision of Yair Minsky in May 2013. His research involves geometry, topology and dynamics of surfaces and their moduli spaces. He uses various combinatorial and coarse techniques to study geometric flows on the Teichmüller space, and also the Ioan Marcut mapping class group of surfaces. The focus of his PhD thesis was on developing a kind of symbolic coding for Weil-Petersson geodesics. He enjoys living in the cities of Champaign and Urbana and interacting with other scholars and students at the University of Illinois.

Theodore Molla J.L. Doob Research Assistant Professor PhD 2013, Arizona State University Theo Molla completed his PhD under the supervision of Henry Kierstead and Andrzej Czygrinow at Arizona State University. Prior to his PhD he worked as a computer programmer in the greater Phoenix Area. His research is in graph theory with an emphasis on directed graphs and extremal problems. Babak Modami Theodore Molla

University of Illinois Department of Mathematics 6 Fall/Winter 2013 Stefan Müller Visiting Assistant Professor PhD 2008, University of Wisconsin-Madison After completing his PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2008 under the supervision of Yong-Geun Oh, Stefan Müller was a Research Fellow in the School of Mathematics at Korea Institute for Advanced Study. Before joining the Illinois Department of Mathematics, he spent one year as an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Penn State University in Altoona. His research is in symplectic and contact geometry, with the main focus on topological Hamiltonian and contact dynamics. These relatively new theories are motivated by classical mechanics, and have applications to smooth and topological dynamics as well as to other branches of mathematics. Stefan enjoys spending his precious free time with his wife Stefan Müller Minhye and their son Leon Maximilian. Other interests include playing and watching soccer, and his two cats Oskar and Curry.

Laura Schaposnik J.L. Doob Research Assistant Professor PhD 2013, University of Oxford Laura Schaposnik grew up in La Plata, Argentina, where she did her undergraduate degree in Mathematics. She moved to England in 2008 and completed her PhD in 2013 from the University of Oxford under the supervision of Nigel Hitchin. Before coming to Illinois, she spent a year as a Wissenschaftlicher Assistent at Universität Heidelberg, Germany. Her research interest is on the moduli space of Higgs bundles and its relation to representation theory, algebraic geometry and mathematical physics. During her spare time, she enjoys teaching math in schools, cooking, taking photos for her Project 365 and exploring new cities. Laura Schaposnik Lizheng Tao Visiting Assistant Professor PhD 2013, Oklahoma State University Lizheng Tao grew up in Shanghai China. He finished his PhD in 2013 at Oklahoma State University, under the direction of Dr. Jiahong Wu. His thesis focused on regularity problems of the partial differential equations, like the Navier Stokes, Boussinesq and Magnetic-Hydrodynamic equations. His current research interests also include other nonlinear PDEs derived from fluid dynamics. His personal interests and hobbies include working on automobiles and playing volleyball.

Anush Tserunyan J.L. Doob Research Assistant Professor Lizheng Tao PhD 2013, UCLA Anush Tserunyan grew up in Yerevan, Armenia, where she received her undergraduate and Master’s degrees in computer science from Yerevan State University. She completed her PhD in mathematics at UCLA under the supervision of Alexander Kechris (Caltech). Her research lies in descriptive set theory, and focuses on the theory of definable equivalence relations and its applications in ergodic theory and topological dynamics. In her free time (what?), she either plays piano and tries to compose, or gathers and recycles the scratch papers of her fiancé (also a mathematician). If she is forced to exercise, she does fencing.

Yi Zhang Visiting Assistant Professor PhD 2012, University of Minnesota Anush Tserunyan Yi Zhang completed his PhD at the University of Minnesota under the supervision of Gennady Lyubeznik. His research interests are in commutative algebra and algebraic geometry. Specifically, he studies the computation of local cohomology modules over polynomial rings and the vanishing of Chow groups over regular local rings. Outside of mathematics, he loves travelling with his wife.

Yi Zhang

Math Times, Fall/Winter 2013 7 www.math.illinois.edu news Faculty Achievements IBEMEA: Alexander and D’Angelo named 2014 AMS Fellows The Integration of Biological, Epidemiological, Mathematical and Engineering Approaches to Professor Emerita Stephanie Alexander and Professor John D’Angelo the Management of Mosquito-Borne Disease: have been selected to the 2014 class of Fellows of the American An Interdisciplinary Global Challenge Mathematical Society (AMS). Alexander and D’Angelo are two of only fifty mathematical scientists selected for this honor this year. IBEMEA is a project collaboration of scientists, Alexander was cited for her contributions to geometry, for high- mathematicians and engineers at the University of Illinois quality exposition, and for exceptional teaching of mathematics. at Urbana-Champaign. This interdisciplinary group, which D’Angelo’s was cited for his contributions to several complex includes both faculty and graduate students, uses a holistic variables and Cauchy-Riemann geometry, and for his inspiration approach to the study of mosquito-borne diseases. Expertise of students. from various areas, such as medical geography and spatial statistics, hydrology, mathematical modeling, ecology of The AMS Fellows program, created in 2012, recognizes AMS infectious diseases, is combined to gain a better understanding members for outstanding contributions to the creation, exposition, of the way in which hydrological modeling and water advancement, communication, and utilization of mathematics. management methods can affect the distribution of mosquito To learn more about the AMS Fellows program visit vectors and thus reduce the prevalence of infectious diseases www.ams.org/profession/ams-fellows/. that are vectored by mosquitoes. Berndt receives honorary doctorate The project is aimed at providing the next generation of scientists, mathematicians and engineers with the knowledge In December 2012, Professor Bruce Berndt received an honorary and skills they will need to take an interdisciplinary approach doctorate from SASTRA University in India. Berndt, Richard Askey, to predicting and managing the prevalence of infectious disease and George Andrews, known as the “Ramanujan Trinity,” received in both wildlife and human populations through the reduction their honorary doctorates at the SASTRA conference “The Legacy of of mosquito populations. Ramanujan” marking the 125th anniversary of the birth of the 20th century Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. Professor Berndt In addition to the collaborative research, graduate level courses holds the distinction of being known as Ramanujan’s mathematical are offered, as well as an IBEMEA speaker series featuring biographer, because he edited the original three notebooks lectures and seminars on a range of topics related to mosquito- of Ramanujan in five volumes and, with Andrews, is editing borne disease management. Ramanujan’s lost notebook in another five volumes. Zoi Rapti, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, is one of the faculty associated with the program that also includes faculty Ahlgren named University Scholar from the College of Veterinary Medicine, the School of Professor Scott Ahlgren has been named a University Scholar. Molecular and Cellular Biology, the Department of Animal Begun in 1985, the scholars program recognizes excellence in Biology, Department of Entomology, Department of Civil and teaching, scholarship and service on all three U of I campuses. Environmental Engineering, Department of Natural Resources Ahlgren, a Professor of Mathematics and Associate Chair of the and Environmental Sciences, and the Illinois Natural History department, conducts research in number theory, connecting to Survey. many areas such as L-functions, elliptic curves and partitions. The IBEMEA Focal Point Project is supported by the Graduate College at the University of Illinois. Learn more about the Deville receives Campus Distinguished Promotion Award IBEMEA project at http://vetmed.illinois.edu/path/ibemea/. Professor Lee DeVille has been awarded a 2013 Campus Distinguished Promotion Award by the Office of the Provost at the University of Illinois for his especially meritorious tenure case. Only three tenure cases are selected across campus each year. Deville received this special recognition based on the scope, quality and impact of his scholarship, teaching, service and engagement efforts.

McCarthy takes new role as Associate Chair for Instructional Technology and Director of NetMath Professor Randy McCarthy has been named to a newly created position in the department: Associate Chair for Instructional Technology and Director of NetMath. McCarthy brings great energy and experience to the position. In the department, he has served previously as Director of Undergraduate Studies and Director of Graduate Studies. He is currently serving on the Senate’s Educational Policy Committee and the campus’s MOOC Review Committee.

Aedes mosquito life cycle.

University of Illinois Department of Mathematics 8 Fall/Winter 2013 news U of I team leads $2 million NSF study on STEM education An interdisciplinary team of STEM education scholars at the within their respective departments. University of Illinois has received a $2-million grant from the Lee DeVille, Associate Professor of Mathematics, is one of the National Science Foundation’s WIDER program to develop a senior personnel on the grant representing the Department of transferable model for implementing evidence-based education Mathematics, and will be leading the mathematics department’s reform in STEM gateway courses. This will be done by effort to interface with the larger WIDER group. introducing proven pedagogies that move away from traditional lecture-based instruction and improving students’ learning “The Mathematics Department here at Illinois has had a experience in the first two years of STEM coursework. long track record of innovative and effective non-traditional pedagogies, especially at the In December, the Obama administration announced freshman and sophomore levels. Some of that increasing the number of U.S. college these ideas are likely transferrable to graduates with degrees in science, other departments on campus, and, technology, engineering and math conversely, there are a (STEM) by one million over large number of effective the next decade is a top priority efforts outside math that will be bolstered by several that we can learn a lot federal agencies. A new study from,” said DeVille. The at Illinois will seek to provide mathematics department U.S. institutions of higher education with has had a long string of a model of best practices and methods to successes with nontraditional reform gateway STEM courses offered in pedagogies, including the Illinois the first two years of study, where increased Geometry Lab, the Engineering Calculus Project, enrollments, student retention, and diversity are the Calculus and Mathematica calculus sequence, critical to meeting the growing national demand for NetMath, and the BioMathematics Program—and the STEM degree holders. goal is to build upon these successes moving forward. The National Science Foundation will fund the multi-year Two more co-principal investigators will coordinate reform study, slated to begin in January 2014, through a $2 million efforts at each college. U of I geologist Jonathan Tomkin will WIDER (Widening Implementation & Demonstration of work within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Evidence Based Reforms) Grant. The ambitious U of I STEM U of I mechanical engineer Matthew West, within the College of education reform project spans three colleges—Liberal Arts Engineering. and Sciences, Engineering, and Education—and targets 10 academic units—Physics, Mechanical Science and Engineering, “The WIDER program will provide a substantial boost to Civil and Environmental Engineering, Electrical and Computer reform efforts already underway in the College of Engineering, Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, School of significantly enhancing the pace of innovation in our core Integrative Biology, School of Molecular and Cellular Biology, gateway courses and allowing us to integrate our efforts Geology, and Chemistry. The gateway courses in these units with STEM departments in the College of Liberal Arts and enroll over 17,000 students annually, and several of the courses Sciences, where engineering students learn core science are required for nearly all STEM majors on campus. subjects,” said West. “In particular, the engineering Strategic Instructional Initiatives Program (SIIP) provided a test bed U of I physicist and educational psychologist Jose Mestre is for the ‘communities of practice’ that form the centerpiece of the principal investigator on the study. “The big idea here is our WIDER strategy, and going forward the SIIP and WIDER not to invent new reforms,” explained Mestre. “It’s taking programs will synergistically interact to advance transformative evidence-based reforms—these are best practices for teaching pedagogy at the University of Illinois.” and learning in gateway STEM courses that have already been extensively tested and proven—and looking at how these can Tomkin added, “Liberal Arts and Sciences has the largest most effectively be implemented in an institutional setting. This introductory STEM courses in the University. Every semester, is challenging because each department at a university will have thousands of students take classes in chemistry, biology and its own methods and traditions and will generally resist change.” math. By accelerating the adoption of the best educational approaches and technologies in these classes, WIDER will The team will attempt to circumvent that resistance by enhance every science and engineering undergraduate establishing “communities of practice”—collaborations of key experience.” faculty members within each academic unit that will develop each unit’s strategy for implementing new pedagogies that move away from the traditional strictly lecture-based model of instruction. It’s hoped that these communities, once established and provided with guidance and methods, will promote the organic emergence of the best-suited evidence-based reforms

Math Times, Fall/Winter 2013 9 www.math.illinois.edu news Students present summer research at REGS Day 2013 REGS Day 2013 was held October 9, 2013. REGS Fellows Matthew Mastroeni and Meghan Galiardi presented work from their summer research projects. REGS Research Assistantship Fellow Daniel Hockensmith presented work from his thesis. All three received monetary awards for their presentations. A pizza party and the awards presentation followed the talks. Matthew Mastroeni (project advisor Sheldon Katz) presented “Matrix Factorizations and Singularity Categories in Codimension Two.” His project involved the construction of a functor from the category of codimension two matrix factorizations of a regular sequence over a regular ring to the singularity category of the corresponding complete intersection ring. Meghan Galiardi (project advisor Lee Deville) presented “Evolutionary Dynamics in Finite Populations.” She used game theory to construct a Markov chain modeling the dynamics between two populations of finite size. By taking the large number limit, the Markov chain was approximated by a 1-parameter family of deterministic differential Meghan Galiardi, left, and Matthew Mastroeni equations. Most of the REGS project was spent categorizing the possible bifurcation diagrams for this family. This family of differential equations represents the average of the Markov chain. Future work will study deviations from this limiting model using diffusion approximations. Daniel Hockensmith, who will finish his PhD this academic year, is working under the direction of Eugene Lerman. He discussed “Folded Symplectic Geometry.” Hockensmith spent the summer developing the tools necessary to show that if one specifies a set of invariants, taken to be components of a moment map, as well as a second cohomology class in a general orbit space W, then one may recover the toric folded symplectic manifold over W up to isomorphism. This work extends previous results of Delzant, Pires, Guillemin, Lerman, and Karshon. The MCTP grant will continue to support REGS through May 31, 2014. For more information about REGS, visit www.math.illinois.edu/REGS/. Daniel Hockensmith

Math and magic are theme for Sonia Math Day for Girls The Indian mathematician Bharati Krishna Tirthaji once said, Yeakel lead an activity on “Flexagation” and created models folded “‘Is this mathematics or magic?’ And we invariably answer from strips of paper that can be folded in many different ways to and say: ‘It is both. It is magic until you understand it; and it is mysteriously reveal new faces. mathematics thereafter’.” This year the theme for the second This event was supported by the U of I Department of Mathematics, annual Sonia Math Day for Girls was math and magic. Held on the Illinois Geometry Lab, and the National Science Foundation. Saturday, November 9, 2013, the day consisted of several hands-on workshops for girls in grades 8-12. The event is designed to encourage high school girls in the Urbana-Champaign area to pursue mathematics and organized was by the President, Amelia Tebbe, and Vice President, Michelle Delcourt, of the local chapter of the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM). Assistant Professor Laura Schaposnik and graduate student Colleen Ackermann led a session on the mathematics behind a number of card tricks based in part on the book Magical Mathematics by Persi Diaconis and Ron Graham, as well as Colm Mulcahy’s Card Colm on the Mathematical Association of America’s website. Graduate students Neha Gupta and Juan Villeta-Garcia lead a discussion about “magic” squares, n by n grids Students learn about platonic solids at Sonia Math Day. Pictured from left: Bailey Wendt, with rows, columns, and diagonals summing Matthew Ando, James Unwin, Neha Gupta, Jennifer Wise, Sarah Yeakel. Photo by to same number. Graduate student Sarah Laura Schaposnik.

University of Illinois Department of Mathematics 10 Fall/Winter 2013 news Record participation in Our most recent PhD alumni fall UI math contests Who they are and where they are now This year’s math contest season is off to a fantastic start, with record participation levels in the first two major contest events, the • Anja Bankovic, Visiting Assistant Professor, Boston UI Freshman Math Contest held on September 23, 2013, and the College UI Mock Putnam Exam, held on September 25, 2013. A combined total of 71 students participated in these contests, easily beating last • Christopher Bonnell, Associate Predictive Modeler, year’s record turnout of 58 students. Allstate Insurance The UI Freshman Math Contest is an entry level contest that • Thomas Carty, Assistant Professor, Bradley provides freshmen an opportunity to show their problem solving University skills in direct competition against their peers. First offered in • Jinwon Choi, Research Fellow, Korea Institute for 2011, this contest has been spectacularly successful and it is now Advanced Study the most popular of our local math contests, with 40 students • Desmond Cummins, Visiting Assistant Professor, participating this year. Haidong Gong, a Freshman in Mathematics, West Point and Xinglun Li, a Freshman in Physics, both earned a perfect score and shared the top prize in this year’s edition of this contest; Tong • Abdulla Eid, American University in Cairo Li, a Freshman in Chemistry, was the runner-up. • Sogol Jahanbekam, University of Denver The UI Mock Putnam Exam is a long-running local version of • Kyle (Fang-Kai) Jao, Summer intern at Facebook, the Putnam Exam, a nationwide math contest for undergraduates and M.S. study in Computer Science that has been dubbed the “world’s toughest math test.” The exam consists of six challenging math problems, similar in nature to • Bo Gwang Jeon, Postdoc, Columbia University problems on Putnam contests, but a bit easier. The winner of this • Eunmi Kim, Postdoc, National Institute for year’s edition was Luvsandondov Lkhamsuren, a Sophomore Mathematical Sciences (NIMS), Korea in Computer Science and the runner-up in last year’s Freshman • Chih-Chung Liu, Military service in Taiwan Math Contest. In second place was Yijun Cheng, a Senior in Mathematics. Haidong Gong, a Freshman in Mathematics and co- • Rasimate Maungchang, Instructor, Walailuk winner of the UI Freshman Math Contest, and Moon Lee, a Senior University, Thailand in Mathematics, tied for third place. • Hyunchul Park, Visiting Assistant Professor, The contests are organized by Professor A.J. Hildebrand and College of William and Mary graduate student M. Tip Phaovibul. • Victoria Reuter, Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin–Platteville • Faruk Temur, Assistant Professor, Izmir Institute of NetMath Mentor Excellence Technology, Turkey Award recipients named • Joseph Vandehey, Postdoc, University of Georgia The NetMath Mentor Excellence Awards are given to our • Kelly Yancey, Postdoc, University of Maryland undergraduate mentors in recognition of outstanding performance • Matthew Yancey, Research Staff Member, Institute throughout the past semester. for Defense Analysis NetMath is an online distance learning program of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Illinois. NetMath mentors help students in online courses by grading assignments promptly, giving detailed feedback on coursework, and maintaining an coding in his spare time. Mahesh’s hobbies include playing and enthusiastic and positive attitude. These mentors have received high watching sports of any kind. evaluations from their students and we appreciate their diligence Brandon Wood is a Sophomore in Aerospace Engineering. He and dedication to our program. The award recipients for Fall 2013 transferred to the University of Illinois in January 2013. Before are Ananya Uppal, Mahesh Vishwanath, and Brandon Wood. coming to Illinois, Brandon was in the Army and took all his Ananya Uppal is a Junior in Mathematics and Computer Science. classes online. During this time he took Math 220 and Math 231 She learned to use Mathematica when she started doing research online with NetMath, while being situated overseas. Brandon’s at the Illinois Geometry Lab three semesters ago. Ananya enjoys hobbies include backpacking, climbing, writing and photography. mentoring for NetMath because it gives her the opportunity to work His current interests lie in the field of interstellar space travel and with Mathematica and also learn math. the challenges of going into deep space. Mahesh Vishwanath is a Sophomore with Junior standing in Visit the NetMath website https://netmath.illinois.edu/ for more Computer Science. He is a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and enjoys information.

Math Times, Fall/Winter 2013 11 www.math.illinois.edu news Midwest Dynamical Systems LAS celebrates The Midwest Dynamical Systems meeting has occurred at least annually for over 40 years. This year on November 1-3, 2013, the 100th anniversary meeting was held at the University of Illinois for the first time. Gallery of Excellence recognizes The meeting was supported by an NSF grant held by IUPUI (B. Kitchens, Principal Investigator) and funds from the University five mathematicians of Illinois and Northwestern University. The College of LAS at the University of Illinois is celebrating its This was the largest Midwest Dynamical Systems meeting in 100th anniversary. It’s been a busy 100 years at LAS. For the next history with over 100 participants from all over the Midwest and year, the largest college on campus will commemorate all that’s beyond. The organizers of the meeting were Jayadev Athreya been accomplished. As part of that celebration, LAS has created (University of Illinois), Joseph Rosenblatt (University of Illinois), the LAS Gallery of Excellence, an ongoing list of the century’s and Kelly Yancey (University of Maryland). The meeting gave most significant faculty, staff, and alumni. all the participants an exciting view of a broad spectrum of While the advances in science, education, and cultural under- cutting edge results and methods in the theory of dynamical standing that trace their roots to the college are too many to count, systems. the gallery is an attempt to symbolize them by highlighting some There were nine talks: a plenary talk on Friday by Giovanni of the most prominent names to emerge from LAS since it was Forni (University of Maryland), and 8 special talks on Saturday formed 100 years ago. and Sunday by Vitaly Bergelson (Ohio State University), Laura From brilliant teachers and researchers who spent their careers on DeMarco (University of Illinois at Chicago), Marian Gidea campus, to alumni who left to make their mark elsewhere, those (Yeshiva University), Francois Ledrappier (University of Notre who call LAS home are responsible for some of the most important Dame), Roland Roeder (IUPUI), Ayşe Şahin (DePaul University), ideas and discoveries in the 20th and 21st centuries. Dan Thompson (Ohio State University), and Ralf Spatzier (University of Michigan). There was also a poster session with Five math department achievements were recognized in the first 12 participants presenting posters on Saturday afternoon. release of the LAS Gallery of Excellence. The math department honorees include the Four Color Theorem and four outstanding scholars, David Blackwell, Joseph Doob, Freeman Hrabowski, and Upcoming conferences Michio Suzuki. The gallery will be updated with more names as this milestone Poisson 2014 year continues. Visit the LAS Gallery of Excellence at Poisson 2014 is the 9th in a series of international conferences www.las.illinois.edu/100/excellence/. on Poisson geometry. It will be held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus. The event is comprised of a Summer School (July 28–August 1, 2014), aimed at students in their final years, PhD students and young researchers, and Alumni News a Conference (August 4–8, 2014), to be attended by students Youn-Seo Choi, who received his PhD in 1999 under the direction and researchers from around the world, including some of the of Bruce Berndt, is currently Chair of the School of Mathematics leading mathematicians in the field of Poisson geometry. Local of the Korea Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS). KIAS is organizers are Eugene Lerman and Rui Loja Fernandes. Visit the generally recognized to be the premier mathematics research conference website at www.math.illinois.edu/Poisson2014/. institute in Korea.

Number Theory at Illinois: Wojtek Samotij received his PhD in 2010 under the direction of A Conference in Honor of the Batemans Jozsef Balogh. He was awarded the prestigious EuroComb Prize A Number Theory Conference honoring the Paul and Felice in September 2013 for his fundamental results in extremal and Bateman will be held at the Department of Mathematics, probabilistic combinatorics, particularly for establishing extremal University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, June 5–7, 2014. properties of sparse structures, and for obtaining sparse random Twenty invited talks and more contributed talks are planned. analogs of classical results in combinatorics and additive number This meeting continues a long tradition of conferences organized theory as well as counting versions of these analogs. The prize was by the Number Theory group in the Department of Mathematics. established to recognize excellent contributions in Combinatorics, Local organizers are Harold Diamond and Bruce Reznick. Visit Discrete Mathematics and their Applications by young European the conference website at www.math.illinois.edu/nt2014/. researchers not older than 35. Jaebum Sohn, who received his PhD in 2001 under the direction of Bruce Berndt, has been elected Secretary General of the Korean Mathematical Society. Sohn is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Yonsei University in Seoul.

University of Illinois Department of Mathematics 12 Fall/Winter 2013 student profile Sarah Manuel By Jim Dey

Sarah Manuel has made the most of her Manuel is one of those fortunate young people college career, filling the roles of student and who, as a high school student, had thought teacher while working as an intern at three about what she wanted to study and different corporations. where she wanted to go to school. With an aptitude for math, but no interest in becoming Now, with an actuarial science job lined up at a math teacher, Manuel said she thought about Deloitte Touche in Chicago after graduation, combining math and business. After hearing she is preparing to become a taxpaying about the possibilities of actuarial science as a professional in the workaday world. career, she spent a day shadowing an insurance “I’m definitely enjoying my (senior) year. But company actuary to see what it was like. I think by the end I will be ready to enter the “I talked to a lot of actuaries. They seemed working world,” said Manuel, a 21-year-old like my kind of people,” she said. from St. Louis, Mo. With her field of study confirmed, Manuel Manuel has excelled as an actuarial science Sarah Manuel set about finding the right place to pursue student in the University of Illinois’ math her degree. She discovered the University of department, to the point that she was awarded the Illinois had a “a great actuarial science program” and confirmed Bradley M. and Karen A. Smith Scholarship for the 2013-14 school her choice with a campus visit. year. Rick Gorvett, director of the actuarial science program, said Manuel was a natural choice for the award that honors an “Once I looked at the campus—it was so gorgeous—I knew it was outstanding student in his department. the place for me. I love the U of I,” Manuel said. “When you consider the whole package—energy, intelligence, She was accepted from the start of her freshman year for internships, communications skills—she stands out,” he said. working for five semesters at the campus-based State Farm Research and Development Center. She later spent summers interning at CNA Majoring in actuarial science and economics while minoring in Insurance and Deloitte Touche, and said the experiences drove home informatics and business, Manuel is an undergraduate assistant the importance of being prepared for life after college. who teaches an exam review course for actuarial science majors and co-teaches a seminar for freshmen. She’s already passed three “It gave me the chance to take on more responsibility in a corporate professional actuarial exams and is the president of the Actuarial setting before I fully entered the corporate world. I gained a totally Science Club. new perspective,” Manuel said. The middle of three children, Manuel’s father is a lawyer while her mother does accounting work That all adds up to a busy schedule, but Manuel has no complaints. for an advertising firm. She credits her parents for emphasizing the “I really love what I’m doing. It does not really feel like I’m importance of pursuing academic success while not putting her overworked,” she said. under excessive pressure. Her busy schedule is unusual. Gorvett described Manuel as “so “My parents did a great job while I was growing up of motivating involved in everything” and said he’s watched her meet one me,” Manuel said. challenge after another. “I’ve known her pretty much from day one, and she’s done nothing but steadily increase my expectations for Jim Dey is a columnist and editorial writer for The News-Gazette her career,” he said. “She’s going to be a good one.” in Champaign-Urbana.

Homecoming We welcomed back many alumni at Homecoming 2013 on a mild, but very windy October day. In addition to enjoying the luncheon buffet, alumni were able to visit the bell tower in Altgeld Hall and attend the Illinois Geometry Lab open house where one could see a demonstration of the 3D printer and talk with students about the research projects on display at the open house. Join us next year on Saturday, October 25, 2014 when the Illini take on Minnesota! Information will be posted at www.math.illinois.edu/homecoming/ or visit us on Facebook.

Math Times, Fall/Winter 2013 13 www.math.illinois.edu honor roll of donors July 1, 2012 – June 30, 2013

We honor those who have given so generously to the Department of Mathematics to strengthen and enhance excellence in mathematics at Illinois.*

The Honor Roll of Donors is not published online for security reasons. If you would like a hardcopy of this issue that does contain the Honor Roll of Donors, please contact the editor (see page 2 for contact information).

University of Illinois Department of Mathematics 14 Fall/Winter 2013 Today, moreDepartment than ever, the Department of Mathematicsof reliesMathematics on the generosity of its alumni Giving and friends. Join usForm in ensuring a brilliant future by supporting the department in its educational and research missions.  Yes! I believe in the importance of excellence in mathematics and wish to show my support!

$______Mathematics Partnership Fund (#332346) $______Illinois Mathematics Scholarship Fund (#341016) Your gift to the Partnership Fund will have the widest impact Scholarships enable the most promising admitted undergraduate as it supports a range of activities including student awards mathematics students to pursue their education at Illinois. and travel, distinguished lecturers, the recruitment of excellent faculty, and alumni events. $______Mathematics Research Experience Endowment Fund (#772913) $______Actuarial Science Fund (#330225) Support research experiences for undergraduate students (REUs). Support Actuarial Science through scholarships, fellowships, graderships, and faculty support. $______Mathematics Legacy Fund (#330316) Support our bold plan to renovate Altgeld/Illini Halls to create a collaborative environment for mathematics learning and discovery.

Please print your name and address: 5NBAK 332346 Name(s)______Home/Cell Phone: ______Email______Address______City ______State ______Zip Code ______

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Please mail this form to: University of Illinois Foundation, P.O. Box 3429, Champaign, IL 61826-3429 or give online by visiting the Department of Mathematics website at www.math.illinois.edu/gifts/.

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Math Times, Fall/Winter 2013 15 www.math.illinois.edu Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage Department of Mathematics PAID MathCollege of Liberal Arts andTimes Sciences Permit No. 100 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Champaign, IL 61820 273 Altgeld Hall 1409 W. Green Street Urbana, IL 61801

IJM resumes regular publication schedule in 2014 by Renming Song, Editor-in-Chief

he Illinois Journal of Mathematics is on track to resume a regular publication schedule in early 2014 due to an Tincrease in production by publishing six issues this past year instead of the usual four. The subscription rate for 2014 will remain at the 2013 level of $300 for the volume, with no price increases, publishing at 22 cents/page and allowing the IJM to hold its position as a high quality mathematics journal offered at a low cost.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the following faculty members who have helped us with the journal over the past year, and we recognize that this may be an incomplete listing: Pierre Albin, Stephanie Alexander, Florin Boca, John D’Angelo, Harold Diamond, Lee DeVille, Lou van den Dries, Nathan Dunfield, Iwan Duursma, Rui Fernandes, Kevin Ford, Phil Griffith, Aimo Hinkkanen, Sasha Kostochka, Denka Kutzarova, Gabriele LaNave, Chris Leininger, Eugene Lerman, Xiaochun Li, Charles Rezk, Derek Robinson, Joseph Rosenblatt, Joe Rotman, Zhong-Jin Ruan, Alex Tumanov, and Alex Yong. The journal wouldn’t be able to function without the generous help of referees and consultants.

We would also like to give special thanks to A.J. Hildebrand for his continued support of journal operations.

More information about IJM is available at http://ijm.math.illinois.edu/.

Department of Mathematics Fall/Winter 2013